


Like Dreamers Do

by Gildedmuse



Category: Across the Universe (2007)
Genre: Drinking, Drug Use, F/M, Light Angst, M/M, Niche Fandom Fic, No Beta We Die Like Soldiers, One Shot, Originally Posted on LiveJournal, References to the Beatles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-20
Updated: 2019-04-20
Packaged: 2020-01-22 20:27:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,214
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18534901
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gildedmuse/pseuds/Gildedmuse
Summary: Max really only gets one shot at a decent rebellion. He wants Jude to be part of that.





	Like Dreamers Do

**Author's Note:**

> [Originally published on LJ in 2008]

**Like Dreamers Do**

  
New York, at least while Max is still living off his savings, is like a constant party. Not one of those fancy cocktail things his parents throw either, but a real party with music and girls and more of those two things. It’s like the last day of school at Princeton, except less people have that whole stick up their ass ivy league attitude. Plus, being the roommates of one sexy singer, Jude and Max are on permanent invite to this celebration. A fact that Max takes no small advantage of.  
  
“That girl, over there.” Max lounges back in the small table their group has crowded around, pointing out through the crowd with the bottle neck of his beer. One of the many skills he picked up in college while he was skipping out on Chemistry and English had been drinking. He just about perfected it in the time he should have been studying, which turns out to be more useful to him than all the damn equations in the world. Max could have told his dad this and spared him the tuition, and he had told more than a few teachers along the way. They never seemed to appreciate his honesty. “Her, I’m taking her home with me.”  
  
Max attempts to stand, barely managing to get to his feet before falling back again. He lands awkwardly on Jude and Dave’s lap, which gets most of the table laughing. Well, except Dave, but that’s mostly because of the way Max’s head collides with his chin. “Sorry, man,” he mutters, hauling himself up so that he’s balancing on one of Jude’s legs.   
  
Dave rubs at his chin, smiling at Max. “It’s cool,” he says, waving it off and that is what Max fucking loves about this place. No one cares, not the way they do back home where you have to get every little thing right all the time. No, here Max can get so drunk he can’t even stand straight, enough to fall back on the laps of two guys he’s known for less than a week, and they’re totally cool with the whole show.  
  
“I’ll buy you another round,” Max promises, patting Dave on the shoulder. He’s in a damn good mood, has been since he told his folks he was leaving Princeton. Maybe Max gets a little too much joy from pushing his father’s buttons, but it had to be done. He couldn’t stay at that place any more than Jude could have kept working at his docks. No, life was too short for shit like that. They’re not their parents and their little greatest generation, whatever they call themselves.   
  
Fuck, Max’s head is just full of these thoughts when he drinks. So of course his big remedy is to get them more beer.  
  
Jude keeps laughing as Max tries to get the attention of the barkeep. Max can feel it, since he‘s still perched up on one of Jude‘s legs. He plans on moving, just after he can figure out how to without falling back on his ass. “You know, I think that’s a guy,” he says, nodding towards the girl Max had been hitting on across the room and without her actually knowing.  
  
Everyone in their ever expanding group (people out here like a guy with money, especially a drunk guy who tends to over order) look over towards the dancers, picking out the one Max had pointed out earlier. They watch for a moment, or some of them do and others laugh and turn right back to their free drinks and private conversations. “Yep,” Lizzy agrees as she leans around Dave to get a better vantage point. Max is looking, too, squinting through the low lights and all he sees is a really cute ass. “Look at those hips. Definitely a guy.” She chuckles, patting Max’s head and even though it’s suppose to just be a quick pat, Max leans into it, rubbing against her nails. He’s easy. “Don’t let the long hair fool you.”  
  
In fairness, the guy does have hair down to his waist and really girlie jeans with flowers printed up and everything. Max cocks his head, trying to study him a little longer, just to make sure Lizzy isn’t just saying that. Okay, fine, it is a guy and now everyone is looking and laughing at him. Not that Max has ever had a problem with attention before, good or bad. “I knew that,” he claims, and Lizzy’s eyebrows go right up.  
  
“You knew that?” She repeats back to him wearing this smug little smile as she leans back, like she thinks Max is going to back down. She doesn’t know that he’s embarrassed himself way worse than this before.  
  
“Yeah, sure,” Max says, staring over at the guy, girl, whatever. “And, besides, I was only looking at his ass. I don’t think anything else matters.”  
  
Beneath him, Jude snorts, almost spitting beer across Max’s hair and that is what finally gets Max to scoot over, falling onto the seat next to Jude instead of on top of him. “You know, I don’t think it works like that. At least it doesn’t in Liverpool,” he answers, and he has this bright look to his whole face, this amazed and amused expression like he’s never met someone quite like Max.  
  
Personally, Max could just soak in that fucking look. It’s nice, that someone other than Lucy finds him that entertaining.  
  
“It’s my own personal philosophy,” Max jokes, raising his empty beer bottle in a fake salute.  
  
Lizzy is still watching all of this, laughing every now and then, probably over how drunk Max is, but hey as long as people are amused by him, right? “You’re in New York now,” she says, tucking herself under Dave’s arm and smiling out at the both of them. “Forget everything you learned in England or Jersey. This, this is where it’s all happening.”  
  
She isn’t wrong.  
  
*  
  
“Seven days a week-”  
  
“No, no…” Max flails a bit, trying to correct Jude’s crooning, since it is right in his ear and all. It should at least be right, if he‘s going to sing it against Max‘s face. Patting Jude’s shoulder for his attention, hard to manage when they’re tangled around one another to keep from passing out on the walk back, Max shakes his head to get Jude to stop for a second. “No, man.”   
  
Okay, maybe he shouldn’t have cuffed him that hard. Jude sways and stumbles under Max’s hand, laughing at the near face-meets-pavement moment before they pull themselves straight up again. Seeing as how drunk they are (“Sloshed,” Jude calls in, but Max is half certain he is just making these words up now), keeping each other standing is more difficult than any of the work Max failed to do at Princeton. “No, it’s Eight Days A Week,” he sings, voice cracking all over the song.  
  
He laughs at his own attempt and takes a drag from the joint the band they’d heard tonight had given them after the show. Good guys, not just because they got them free beer and pot. Okay, maybe it had been that, but that doesn’t make them any less cool to Max. It doesn’t take too much to impress.   
  
“Eight days a week,” Jude tries singing again, but his voice cracks as he reaches for the notes and it ends up more as a laugh, clinging to Max’s jacket to keep himself steady. “I loo-oo-oo-ve you.”  
  
Yeah, they were pretty drunk.  
  
“Whoa, whoa,” Max warns, grabbing the side of the brick building he thinks, if he could get his vision to stop swimming, is their place. The one from Rant Magazine, with the sexy singer and bad view. They’ve lived here a week, Max still occasionally walks into the wrong apartment. All these buildings, they all kind of look the same to him. So he backs up, more likes trips backwards into Jude’s arm slung around his waist, squinting up towards the top. It is. Max beams, deserves another drink for getting them here like this. “Here we are, man. Home sweet home.”  
  
“Eight days a week,” Jude keeps singing, hands grasping around for air until they settle on Max’s jacket again. Maybe they should have stopped the celebrations after Sadie left, but what fun would that have been? Max is in a good mood, what with being the resident of his own fucking New York rented out room, and he had his parents money to burn through before his dad found it missing. What better way to spend it then getting, as Jude would say, sloshed.  
  
The other roommates, they’d headed home after Sadie finished her peace. Gone back home and left Jude and Max and a few random strangers who has suddenly become Max’s friends after so many beers at the bar for a while longer. They’d listened to two more bands before the owners decided it was time for them (and everyone else) to go home.  
  
“So, this is the great New York city, is it?” Jude asks, apparently tried of the song. It’s been almost a week and he still looks astonished to be so far away from home… Where ever that is. Max is sure he asked, but it’s one of the many details he managed to drink out of his head that night. Now Jude’s here though, so that other place doesn‘t matter, leaning on Max as he pushes open the door with his shoulder the best he can. “Sort of smells, huh?”  
  
Max laughs, stumbling into the stairwell and grabbing wildly for the banister before both of them collapsed. “Only parts of it smell like this.” He chuckles again, as if he‘s said something really clever. Maybe he did and just missed it, his brain is still sort of hazy with smoke. “New York has plenty of other smiles as well. Trust me, this is the place for guys like us.”  
  
Jude snorts, sliding his arms off of Max so he can slowly slip down onto the stairs. Clearly, he isn’t up for another round of climbing up these things. “I’m not really trying to be any place.”  
  
“Exactly!” Max claims, patting Jude’s shoulder again. He stares up at the stairway, which he is pretty sure isn’t suppose to be swaying like that. After a second, he decides to sit down next to Jude. “New York is the perfect place to be when you’re trying to be nowhere.” Max thinks he knows what Jude is looking for, he isn’t the only one trying to avoid all that responsibility that’s been piled onto the whole growing up scheme.  
  
He takes another long drag from their borrowed joint before passing it off to Jude, who just sort of shakes his head. “Nice place to get lost I guess,” Jude muses, sounding suspiciously sober for a moment. Max forces the pot into his hand. Can’t have any of that. All those days at Princeton, when Max had to almost sort of follow some rules (not that he did that very well), he wants to get rid of them. This, this is a whole new life, that Jude gets to share with him, and Max isn’t going to have a friend somber and thinking to hard when they’re lucky enough to have a place to sleep and a shower that kind of works some days. What else can you want from life?  
  
They pass off until the hall is just as hazy with smoke as Max’s head, the idea being that they’d sober from the alcohol while getting high. Max isn’t sure how it will work exactly, but it all sounds good to him.  
  
After a stretch, Max is starting to get bubbly. He doesn’t so well in silence, he likes when there is noise. Preferable his own voice, but anything will do most of the time. Besides, seeing as they are living together now, Max should get to know his brand new roommate (he has plans to get to know others to, after Sadie gets over that whole off limits thing). “So, Judey,” Max slurs, tongue heavy in his mouth. Must be the alcohol, so he takes another drag of the joint to get his sense back. Apparently, Jude is not amused by the nickname. The next breath of smoke he takes in, he blows in Max’s face.  
  
Max laughs and coughs as the cloud covers him, nipping and swallowing down the air. He might need a few more drinks to even all the pot out.  
  
“You really have a girl waiting back home?” See, that is one of the things Max had remembered Jude telling him. Kind of hard to forget since Jude spent most of that night staring at his sister. Which might worry some brothers, but Lucy is a good kid (too good, in Max’s opinion. He did his best but that girl just resists almost all his attempts to break her from their parents) and Max doesn’t have time to worry about her honor. Actually, he’d kind of like it if she got off her high hoarse a bit and acted like a normal teenager in the throes of rebellion for a while. He can see the potential in her.  
  
  
  
Still, he doesn’t necessarily want a guy with a girlfriend all over his sister with a boyfriend. She is still his little sister after all, he has to make some attempt at being all noble and shit for her sake.  
  
“Mm…” Jude gets that too serious look again and lays back on the stairs in an awkward bend. “Yeah, I guess… But, you know, I just get the feeling that somewhere out there…”  
  
Max cuts him off with a laugh, mostly because he is too drunk right now to discuss soul mates or something. “I know what you mean.” At least he thinks he does, he can’t be sure since his head is a foggy place at the moment. If his head were clear, Max probably wouldn’t have agreed with Jude. He isn’t sure there is a girl out there for him, no there are probably many girls out there waiting on a guy like Max. High school chicks he can’t legally have, older woman like Sadie who wouldn’t let him touch them; he isn’t picky. Love is love anyway, right? Max isn’t about to limit the lucky number of girls who get to be with him. “So, you looking for this somewhere girl?”  
  
Jude laughs, falling down two stairs without seeming to notice. “Not really.” That’s something that Max likes to hear. “Sort of a nowhere man at the moment myself.”  
  
“We’ll fix that.” Max grunts as he pushes himself up, leaning over Jude now resting on the floor, head laying on the first step. “Trust me, it’ll be plenty of fun.”  
  
With a lazy, intoxicated smile, Jude tips his head back towards Max. “Haven’t been bored yet.” Max chuckles, shaking Jude’s shoulder roughly. He loves being the center of attention for someone, especially if it meant fun and slacking off. Anything that would piss off his parents, really.  
  
“Let’s get your ass back upstairs,” Max teases, grabbing Jude’s shoulder and hauling him up to his feet. It really takes both of them, limbs flailing and grabbing onto banisters, the wall, each other, anything to pull themselves up. The drunk helping the drunk up, but with only a few minor falls and a quick scuffle they manage. Plus, Jude kind of deserved that knock to the head for almost pulling down Max’s pants on his second attempt to climb up.  
  
“Eight days a week,” Jude sings, loud enough for the whole building to hear as he lets Max drag him up the stairs, clutching the back of his shirt to try and follow. “Is not enough to show I care.”  
  
“You gonna sing that the whole way up?” Max asks, grabbing onto the banister for balance. At some point in the night, Jude managed to out drink him. He isn’t sure when it happened, but he is starting to think he is the more sober of the two. Never a good sign. “Cause let me tell you, I don’t think I can take your singing for much longer.”  
  
“Like yours is any better,” Jude points out, laughing as Max as he starts to help haul them both up to the top floor. Maybe Jude had been right, they should have gone for some place a little less high up, but no other place comes with the same bohemian squalor, sexy singer, and.. Well, Max isn’t sure what else the apartment has to offer. It’s kind of a beaten down old place, but he’s grown fond in this short week.  
  
“Yeah, well, my looks make up for my lack of talent,” Max mutters under his breath, smiling and giving Jude a little nudge with his shoulder. Bad plan, as they’re holding each other up and neither one that steady. They end up rocking for a while before Jude catches them, dragging them up another flight of stairs.  
  
It takes them a good ten minutes to get up to the apartment. Considering the number of times Max had to stop to catch his breath of Jude collapsed on the stairs laughing too hard (Max’s hair really didn’t look that funny, but then Max couldn’t see his own head after Jude tied his hair up), ten minutes wasn’t too shabby. “What was that other song?” Jude asks as they drag themselves through the dark apartment. Max isn’t sure what time it is exactly, but he can see the sun starting to peak up through the windows. “Love, love my do?”  
  
Max gives a bark of laughter that Jude quickly cuts off, his hand going over Max’s mouth. “Shh,” he reminds him with a drunk snicker of his own. They aren’t very good at sneaking in quietly, that is for sure. Max licks at Jude’s hand and he pulls it away pretty fucking quickly, snorting as he rubs it off down Max’s shirt.  
  
“Bastard,” Max mutters, letting go of Jude and falling down into Jude’s bed. Sure, he has one of his own, but he’s too lazy to get there. Besides, Jude can share for one night, after Max just blow most of what cash he had left buying their drinks.  
  
“Actually, yes,” Jude reminds him, falling right next to Max. Either he doesn’t know whose bed this is, or he isn’t complaining about having to sprawl out over Max just to get some space on his own mattress. Either way works for Max, so long as he doesn’t have to get back up again. “’Swhy I came here, remember?”  
  
“Why you came here,” Max repeats, not sounding convinced. “No, see, you haven’t figured out why you came here yet, you….” It’s really just more drunken rambling from Max, and when he feels Jude’s hot breath against his cheek, his friend giving one of those sleepy moans as he nuzzles in closer, Max just gives up on the whole thing. Who knows why Jude is here; in America, in New York, in bed with Max. But he’s glad he’s come, even if it’s only to drool on Max in his sleep for a while.


End file.
